M’sia more meritocratic than S’pore?

LKY, the husband of “Peanuts” Choo, and any number of M’sian Chinese PRs (who generally refuse to become S’poreans) tell us S’pore is a more meritocratic place than M’sia.

So how come the authors of the Legatum Prosperity Index citing a 2009 Gallup poll report that 93.6% of M’sian believe that their society is meritocratic, while only81.2% of people In S’pore believe our society is meritocratic.

BTW the Legatum people are not anti-S’pore. They rate S’pore 17th in world and 3rd in Asia ahead of Japan and HK, while M’sia is only 43rd.